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by worms212



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Growing Up, Niiyama Natsu, Post-Time Skip, Pro Volleyball Player Hinata Shouyou, Siblings, thanks for the food furudate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28881438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worms212/pseuds/worms212
Summary: Natsu Hinata is not a monster.ORWhen your brother burns as brightly as Natsu's does, sometimes you get burned.
Relationships: Hinata Natsu & Hinata Shouyou
Comments: 7
Kudos: 103
Collections: Genuary 2021





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**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Here's my take on "Niiyama's #10" Natsu (thank you Furudate). I just haven't stopped thinking about her.
> 
> I was going to make this longer, but I think I've made my point. This is just one interpretation, since we only got that one illustration--I'm a sucker for national team Natsu, too, if that makes you feel better!

Natsu Hinata is not a monster.

She is ten years old when her older brother brings out the training volleyball and teaches her to play under the moonlight until their mother makes them come inside. He has always been small, off-the-walls, keeping her up at night, never knowing when to close his mouth. But there is a quiet maturity that seems to wrap around Shouyou when he’s playing, one that sprouted through the fresh snow that fateful winter and would one day follow him to the other side of the world. Natsu watches him with all the wonder of a child face-to-face with their hero. Only Shouyou is not a hero, and he is not a god. Shouyou is 16, and there are many things he does not know. But Natsu decides with a child’s unwavering conviction that she wants to be him, stand on the same stage as him, follow behind him until the world shouts the name  _ Hinata _ twice over.

In many ways, Natsu is lucky in ways her brother never was. In middle school, she joins the volleyball team--not because she feels obligated to, but because the court calls to her in what she imagines is the same way it calls out to Shouyou. They do not compare her to him, Karasuno High School’s rising star who seemed to drop out of the sky after graduation. (She does not tell them he is in Brazil. No one ever asks.) Natsu climbs the ranks in women’s volleyball like it’s her destiny. Like the sun that is their family’s namesake, Natsu Hinata outshines the competition and her teammates alike, and sprouts wings.

In high school, Natsu makes a name for herself as the younger sister of the MSBY Black Jackals’ newest rising star, and wears the brand on her skin like a badge of honor. With her brother’s old number plastered on her chest, she tries to shake the feeling that the voice calling her from the court has been Shouyou’s all along.

The year is 2021. Natsu Hinata makes it all the way to the top of the national stage. As captain of the Niiyama Girls’ Volleyball Club, she leads her team to the semi-finals in Tokyo’s Spring Nationals. But the thing about wings is that they are easily clipped, and Natsu knows this better than most; she watched her brother fly too close to the sun in the quarterfinals all those years ago. So when Niiyama is knocked out of her final high school tournament, Natsu expects to feel devastated. Only it is not Shouyou’s light she is chasing, but merely his afterimage, burned into her irises from years of exposure. What Natsu feels instead is a cold numbness, tinged with relief, and the first thought to cross her mind is  _ “There has to be more to life than this.” _

No, Natsu Hinata is not a monster, but her brother always has been. He is an Olympic athlete, hungry for volleyball in ways she never truly was. So when she tells Shouyou over their weekly video call that she is quitting the sport after high school, she expects him to be upset. What she does not expect is for him to say “Okay!” and ask her about school.

“Wait, you mean you’re not upset that I’m not going pro?” she asks.

Shouyou shrugs, the rising Brazil sun dappling his shoulders. “You’re not me, Natsu. I’ll be proud of whatever makes you most happy.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I am! There’s more to life than volleyball.”

Of course, Natsu realizes, Shouyou would know that better than anyone. Behind the fire that blazes in his eyes, she can see that he, at 24, is wiser than her. He has been around the world and back, and Natsu is old enough to remember, with that cotton-candy childhood fuzz, the days a decade ago when her brother spent his afternoons practicing alone, chasing after a wall others told him was insurmountable--but still, Shouyou knows, there is more to life than what lies beyond it.

The world would know two Hinatas, Natsu decides. Whatever that means, she has the sun in the palm of her hand and all the time in the world to find out.

Natsu Hinata is not a monster. But she is her brother’s sister, burning just as brightly.


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